Birthing Mashiach: Chizuk for Iron Sword by Rabbi David Walk

hi good morning we were just talking a minute ago about how the OU Center is doing some wonderful things not only is there the live learning going on right now in nsim there's a busload of uh Israel Center uh volunteers uh picking uh peppers and avocados in the area around Aza and kode to them uh but welcome to the people who are here for uh for some some learning and some kuk uh I I remember many years ago back to the 70s my first my first teaching job we had a real sedit who was in charge of the kitchen for the young men in um in this High School in uh in New York and whenever bad things were happening you know uh she would uh she would start to cry and was I was found it moving and when I'd come over to just talk to her a little bit she'd always say it must be mhia site it must be mhia time time finally for the Messiah to come and this kind of attitude has been with our people of course since uh at least since the bakaka time uh when Rea said that potentially Bak should be the Messiah things as we know didn't work out as planned um but at least since then and probably earlier when things were bad we were hoping hoping hoping for mhia to come where does this idea come from well it really comes from this week's para um this week's paraa presents to us the two candidates for mik to be our mashia our um H our help and connection to God uh and of course the two people are Yehuda and uh and um yose and as nich said we can understand that ultimately these two episodes starring these two characters emerg the two redeemers of Israel mesiah Ben yose and that of course is the story of him going down to Egypt and succeeding under those circumstances and mhi Ben David which is based on y Bud there is a tradition amongst Jewish thinkers that there will be two stages of the Messianic Redemption involving the Advent of two Messianic figures msia Ben Yos and messia Ben David messia Ben yosf is described as a warrior who will affect the national reunification of the Jewish people prior to the arrival of mhia Ben David who will bring uh ultimate peace and so that's what we read about in in this week's T reading and the fact of the matter is um when you read it there's ultimately a surprise now we don't get the surprise of who is going to succeed until in the that Yu gives before he passes he says will ultimately be our Eternal King and therefore mssiah as well but Rari Khan who we are honored to have in these programs from the center quite often wrote The Following thing a couple of years ago if one if one has a if one thing has seemed clear throughout the last third of Bret now you have to understand our safer Bret has broken up into a few pieces there's the material prior to the aote there's the the chapters starting with through last week's par that are about the aot and now from V till the end of the book the story is really about Yosef primarily and Yehuda in a supporting role so if one thing emerges clearly it is that yoseph will emerge as the arch typal leader less likely as a candidate for leadership is Yehuda who opposed who opposed selling Joseph and whom we see separated from his brothers at the beginning of the story in chapter 39 of Yehuda it says he went down departed and apparently lowered his spiritual level away from the brothers so what ultimately makes yudah the successful candidate as testified by yaku and yoseph in this more subordinate road now when know ysf is yadik who was able to withstand many many difficult um situations and remain a sadic the most famous I there are many but the most famous is with ashed potifa Yehuda on the other s on the other hand fails he he ends up having relations with this uh with this woman who he doesn't know he believes to be some sort of woman of the night and ultimately he admits that this was Tamar so what makes him so great so Rian goes on and says but leaders are also human and their mistakes often have nothing to do with leadership and everything to do with human weakness and Temptation what matters is that you repent the whole issue is as much of a as yose was we we tend to say a sadik gor even a toal sadic cannot stand the makome in the place of the B Chua and ultimately that who that is whom uh Yuda becomes a leader is one who though they may stumble and fall arises more honest humble and courageous than they were before shim Rafal comments on this entire situation and makes a very important point about the Torah and all of the great leaders our Torah never presents our great men as being perfect the Torah never hides from us their faults errors and weaknesses but in truth by the knowledge which is given us of their faults and weaknesses our great men are in no wise made lesser but actually greater and more instructive it will never be our task to whitewash the spiritual and moral Heroes of our past to appear as apologist for them truth is the Seal of our Torah and truthfulness is the principle of all its true and great commentators and teachers so that ultimately we see that Yehuda makes a a grave error but nevertheless he says s come be many she is more righteous than he does Chua he repents for the error and it's that repentance that makes him and his progeny including D who also says kti I sinned it's his descendants who become the leaders and not ultimately the descendants of yadik and we expect from our leaders disability as rakov midan says a leaders ability to admit his mistake and accept full responsibility saved us in the days of David and the plague which his sin brought on Kesh bar only removes the plague when David does chuva and so we want our leaders to always be able to get up and say I was wrong I made a mistake I'm going to do better next time and that is Yehuda so that's why yudah becomes the Messiah however R salic pointed out something else in our paraa which is very very important because there's not only the DNA of Yehuda that brings us to our Messiah there is another participant in producing the DNA the genes which will give us which will give us our our Mia and that isar that there is another contributor to what will make up the character and the nature and the personality of our Messiah and so the r says Tamar was a heroic woman a great woman what could Tamar do that others could not she could wait she possessed the heroic ability to wait Without End Yehuda told Tamar his daughter-in-law remain a widow in your father's house until Shaya my son would be grown up and all of her friends got married people treated her with ridicule and disdain Shayla married Yehuda forgot her and yet she waited wasn't she the Incarnation of knesset Israel which has waited for her beloved thousands of years did not Tamar personify the greatest of all heroic action to wait while the waiting arouses laughter and derision from others so there are two ingredients to being Messiah and bringing mashiach and those two ingredients are number one shua the ability to admit mistakes to grow to develop to become greater and greater than we ever were before and the other ingredient is patience the Jewish Nation follows the example of Tamar and by the way of root both of whom came from outside the Jewish people and both became heroic grim converts to our cause and through them we have learned this power the power to wait and we are right now in the midst of a of a terrible situation uh all of us are just uh uh at which end what things we can do uh RI and I went to our our fourth funeral during this time period uh yesterday and uh and people are pitching in by picking fruits and vegetables on the farms where the where the farmers are are fighting on on the uh on these difficult fronts and it doesn't seem to be an end in sight to this but that's the story of Jewish history Jewish history is about admitting our errors picking up and doing better next time and perhaps even more importantly the ability to hang on to remain strong even when we don't see an immediate solution to our problems um can I email whose name please I'll look at the me message afterwards uh what's what's really important is our ability of the Jewish people to hang tough during these times and we believe just like Tamar was rewarded for her patience with a beautiful set of twins who become leaders within the Jewish Nation so too we believe that our patience the patience of Kessa Israel throughout the Millennia will be rewarded as well we have to like uh like my my friend the Sade that I began talking about uh a few few minutes ago 15 minutes ago we have to believe that it's messia site it is Messiah time but mesia time isn't necessarily the time when mesia himself comes sometimes Mia site is time for us to display the attributes that represent Messiah and again those are yehuda's ability to admit mistakes and to move on from them and do better next time like the mistakes that were made in the beginning of this war we're moving beyond them and learning from them but perhaps even more importantly what we learn from Tamar the patience to hang tough the next days ahead of us are going to be very difficult a lot of people around the world are going to tell us to give up and uh stop uh the war but we can't we have to hang tough and keep fighting until all of our goals are reached and hopefully that will be that will be soon Kamas will be no more and then we can continue our wait which hopefully will be a short one for Mia himself beu it's just important for us to always be doing chuva and always being patient and hanging tough so thank you very very much uh for joining this morning and um we have to continue hanging tough